


Dreams of a Blue Moon

by AmiLu



Series: Whumptober 2019 [13]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: (Lily and James), (or will be), Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canonical Character Death, Fix-It of Sorts, Gen, Harry Potter was Raised by Other(s), Whumptober 2019
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-01
Updated: 2019-11-01
Packaged: 2021-01-16 02:49:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,562
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21263852
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AmiLu/pseuds/AmiLu
Summary: It’s a small change. Remus finishes his mission early, or rather, he finds that he needs to get out sooner than he thought and had planned for.





	Dreams of a Blue Moon

**Author's Note:**

> 27\. Bound (alt16) + 29. Numb + 31. Embrace

It’s a small change. Remus finishes his mission early, or rather, he finds that he needs to get out sooner than he thought and had planned for. The pack he’s been trying to ingratiate himself with had been acting more and more suspiciously in the last weeks, and Remus finally caught onto the fact that his overtures were not going that well. There has been meetings with Death Eaters, and he’s pretty sure they are about to sign themselves up to them, and there is nothing Remus can do now to change their mind. He _could_ try, but he’s been trying for _months_, and though he’s never been truly liked among the werewolves in the pack—he’s too afraid of his wolf, too weak, too _human—_he had at least been tolerated, but the sneers and the aggressiveness have only gotten worse lately, and so there is a prickle of unease that starts on the back of his neck and goes down his spine, and Remus chooses the path of retreat before the pack decides to take more drastic measures.

He’s failed, yes, but if he survives he can try again with others, he can be _useful_ in other ways. If he’s dead, the little bit of usefulness he has to the Order, to Dumbledore, will be over and he can’t bear to think he’d done nothing of true importance for the war efforts before perishing.

And so he picks up his meager belongings, puts on his threadbare cloak, and apparates away. Once, twice, three times. He eats a couple of chocolate pieces and drinks a bit of water, waiting for his magic to replenish—it’s almost the new moon and his reserves are all but spent. He doesn’t want to risk splinching when he’s still so far away from home.

Fifteen minutes later, he apparates again, three more times, and judges that he’s good now to activate the portkey that will take him directly to his small run-down apartment in London.

There’s a fine cape of dust on the floor and on the rest of his beat-up furniture, but he unwinds at the lingering smell of family. He hasn’t been here in at least three months, and he’s a little surprised that the smell of his friends hasn’t disappeared yet, vanished into the air. He leaves his bag on the couch and walks up to the kitchen to put on the kettle—he’s cold—and then looks at his calendar. Uh, it’s October. He hadn’t been tracking the time, not exactly, because the pack lived in the middle of nowhere and they didn’t like humans, and thus, human inventions. Clocks and calendars were not something you could find in there, and Remus had not taken any with him to better blend in. His eyes roam over the dates until they stop on the red one (useful thing, magic. His calendar updates itself even though he hasn’t been there, and the red numbers are always the correct date.)

October 31, 1981. Halloween.

He hadn’t expected to be back until late November, at least. Maybe even December.

From the calendar Remus’ eyes turn to the clock, and his heart skips a beat when he notices it’s early enough to make a few floo calls—to Dumbledore, to explain what happened and why he’s back early. To Sirius. He should also contact James and Lily. Oh, if he hurries, he may even be able to see Harry. He’s not seen the babe for even longer than the months he’s been gone, and he misses him something fierce.

The kettle makes a piercing noise but Remus only waves his wand to turn it off before he’s running outside the house. He knows it’s rather late for a home visit, but for security reasons the Potters don’t have a connected floo, and he’s suddenly too impatient to try other methods first. He knows James will be glad to see him, at least, and Remus has been too isolated, too lonely and on the edge of going crazy for months, and he needs to see his family.

He apparates into the secure little apparition point in Godric Hollow, behind the church in a little desolate part of the graveyard that nobody visits since their last occupants died, well over three centuries ago. He casts a disillusionment charm over himself and then starts walking in a brisk pace towards the Potters’ home.

It takes him a moment notice the eerie silence and feel the oppressive atmosphere, but when he does his breathing becomes shorter, his steps longer. Something is wrong, wrong, _wrong._

Without realizing, he starts to run down the path, vaguely noticing the lanterns and the Halloween decorations all around, but there’s the sound of a warning charm in his ears, or maybe one of those muggle alarms that blare with terrible noise, as he notices there’s not a soul around asking for treats. Halloween is not something every wizard celebrates, and not something that even the Muggle community in England is very interested in, but Godric Hollow is a mixed neighborhood and there has always been at least a couple of kids trick or treating before. That there’s none, even though is around 9, is nothing short of suspicious.

It’s with his heart beating inside his throat that he turns on the corner, a sigh of relief about to escape when he sees the Potter’ cottage, intact and whole, and then—

The explosion is loud, bright, and it makes the ground tremble. Remus loses his feet and falls, arms around his head to protect sensitive ears, while his mind is screeching without making any kind of sense. He feels hot and cold and his stomach turns, but he takes a couple of long breaths and waits until it’s over before he gets up. He’s on his hands and knees, looking desperately towards the cottage and searching for a sign that his friends are safe, but his stomach drops when he realizes what is it that he’s seeing.

The roof is collapsed, caved in, smoking. The magical residue is suffocating in its intensity and charged in a way that only means there’s Dark Magic at play.

He can’t breathe.

No.

No, no, no, _no._

They were supposed to be _safe._ THEY WERE SUPPOSED TO BE SAFE.

Remus doesn’t know how he does it, how he gets from where he collapsed and onto the house, but before he notices it he’s pushing the broken remains of the door aside and running inside.

An anguished sob tears out of his throat when he finds James—at the bottom of the stairs, eyes open and fierce. No fear. No wounds. And Remus knows Avada Kedavra, and he knows that there’s nothing he can do for one of his best friends, but he still feels a pain so fierce that he loses a little part of himself, in that moment.

It hurts even worse than the pull of the full moon, even worse than the tearing of his flesh and bones when he transforms, but he forces himself to ignore his best friend’s body and run up the stairs, because there’s still a _chance,_ there’s still a _chance_ that Lily and Harry are _fine_, that they’re alive, that they got away, somehow.

The door to the nursery is destroyed. It seems that the explosion originated here. Remus pushes aside the worst-case scenarios that pop up in his head and vanishes the rubble to make way, and then—

He hears it. Childish cries, full of anguish and confusion and pain, and his heart lurches at the same time he makes it inside the room.

There is a black stain in front of the crib, and Lily’s body is lying between the two. Little Harry, with his face covered in blood, is crying big fat tears, reaching through the bars down to his unresponsive mother.

Remus' heart breaks. He’s suddenly numb.

Jame’s dead. Lily’s dead. Lily’s—

“Moo-ey?”

Remus’ eyes snap back to the baby as Harry lets out another tearing sob. He doesn’t look at Lily as he goes around her and picks Harry up into his arms, sniffing at him and checking that he is not wounded, apart from the obvious. He has a horrible cut on his forehead, but Remus knows it can’t be as bad as all the blood suggests (head wounds bleed ridiculous amounts, even if the cut is small). He kisses Harry’s cheeks as the baby grabs handfuls of his ratty cloak, still crying and repeating his nickname again and again and again. Remus might be crying, too, but he can’t be sure. He feels far away, detached.

He needs to do something, he knows he needs to—

Feet running up the stairs, nosy, loud, desperate. Remus tenses, muscles coiling and mouth pulling into a snarl as he clutches Harry closer to his body with one arm and points his wand at the open door with the other, ready to hex the person who enters if he deems them to be a danger for the cub.

It’s pure rage and grief what consumes him when Sirius, wide-eyed and frantic, is the one to enter. A curse flies, sharp and instinctive, but it doesn’t do anything because Sirius side-steps it. Remus does it again, moves, fires, moves, growls. It doesn’t quite register that there are no curses coming back for him, not at least until he finally catches the son-of-a-bitch with a body-bind. It’s only then that Remus notices that Sirius is talking.

“—please, Moony, c’mon, listen to me, are you listening to me now? We don’t have time for this, we need to hunt down Peter, we need to—”

“What,” Remus interrupts him. The rage simmers coldly right beneath his skin, “are you babbling about now?”

“Oh, thank _fuck._ Remus, we need to find Peter right now, or he’ll—”

Remus snarls, advancing on Sirius’ restrained form. “Peter? What does Peter have to do with anything? Are you going to kill him, too?” Sirius flinches, pales. Good. _Good._ “Do you think I’ll let you keep hunting my friends? I should kill you right now.”

“Oh, no. No, no, no, Remus. I’m _sorry,_ I’m so sorry, we should have—I should have _trusted you,_ I’m sorry, but it wasn’t _me._ Remus, _it wasn’t me._ _Peter was the secret keeper.”_

It feels like a bucket of freezing water has just been poured over his head. His steps falter. He shakes his head. No. It’s not possible.

“And why the _fuck_ should I believe you?” he growls. “It’s too convenient, huh? No, no. I read the note. You gave it to me, and I read your posh handwriting for seven years’ worth of essays. It was _your_ handwriting, Sirius.”

Sirius’ eyes are still wide, blue-gray. Remus used to love them.

“And how many times did I make Peter rewrite them for me when I was busy or didn’t want to bother with them?” Sirius asks, grim but righteous.

That stops Remus short.

It’s true.

It’s _true,_ Peter used to do that for Sirius and it drove Remus mad. He got good at it, after the first couple of times that McGonagall failed both Sirius and Peter for handing in almost identical essays with very similar handwriting.

Sirius story… It’s plausible.

And Remus doesn’t know if he should hate himself for hoping.

“_Why?”_ he asks. Pleads, really. A good reason. A justification. Some kind of _proof._ That is the only thing he needs to believe.

Sirius closes his eyes, pained. “You weren’t around much. There was a mole. We never knew where you were, or what were you doing, and—”

There’s a tight knot in his throat. “You suspected. Me.”

“I’m so sorry. We—_I_ shouldn’t have. I—” He doesn’t finish the phrase, and Remus is glad. His heart’s been broken too many times this night, and he doesn’t think whatever Sirius has to say right then would help. “We changed Secret Keepers at the last moment. Nobody knew but us three, not even Dumbledore. I thought it was a great idea, you know, being bait. Who’d suspect Peter, right?” He chuckles then, but the sound isn’t happy at all.

Remus’ wand arm finally drops to his side. He feels he’s aged a decade. “Fuck.”

Sirius snorts. “Fuck, indeed.” He sighs. “Look, check my arm for the damn Mark if you want. Hell, get some Veritaserum and I’d gladly repeat every single word under the influence. But—_please,_ we need to get Pettigrew now, before he disappears completely.”

Remus barely mulls it over before he says, resolutely, “No.”

Sirius’ head turns so fast that Remus winces in sympathy. “No?!” he repeats, between flabbergasted and angry. “Why the fuck not?!”

As if on cue, Harry, who had been miraculously quiet until then, starts crying again. Sirius’ eyes widen, then drop to Remus’ left arm. It doesn’t seem like he’d even seen Harry before that.

“Because of this,” Remus answers, rocking the baby from side to side and then dropping a kiss to the top of his messy dark hair. “We can’t leave Harry alone, Sirius. Not now. Not ever again—he needs us. He needs _you,_ because you know that the Ministry will give him over to You-Know-Who before letting a known werewolf raise him, and if you go against Pet—Pettigrew now something tells me it’s not going to be good.”

“But—”

“Think, Sirius. For once in your life, use your brain before diving into danger head-first. Who knows where Pet—Pettigrew is at this point. James and Lily are _dead,_ and Dumbledore thinks that _you_ were the secret keeper. What will happen if you run now? You said Veritaserum. Ask for it. Ask for it and ensure you aren’t thrown in prison, then get Harry’s custody and _then_ we’ll think about Pet—Pettigrew. With some luck, the Ministry will actually be useful for once and will capture him before then.”

Sirius deflates in his bindings, looking blankly at the damaged ceiling. Or, what’s left of it. Then he sighs deeply.

“Okay,” he says. “Okay. You’re right. You’re almost always right, huh?” A chuckle. “We’ll go with your plan. So, please untie me. I wanna hug my godson.”

Remus does so, even though he’s still a bit wary—of what? Of being deceived? Of Sirius running off to search for Pet—_dammit_—Pettigrew anyway?

His worries are for nothing since when Sirius is free, the first thing he does is embrace both of them in one of his bear hugs.

It’s there, in the sudden warmth and safety of his best friend’s arms that everything catches up with him and Remus weeps. It starts off Harry again, and even Sirius’ frame shakes with silent sobs.

It’s how Hagrid finds them, minutes later. The three of them crying their grief, huddled in the middle of what’s left of their best friend’s home. The huge man sputters, then joins them with his own tears, though thankfully he doesn’t try to hug them, too.

After a moment of indulgence, they draw apart. Harry’s still clinging to his tattered cloak, but he’s stopped full-on crying and is hiccuping instead, eyes are falling close. The poor thing must be exhausted.

Remus wipes his own eyes with his free hand, then clears his throat.

“Time to go,” he says, and Sirius nods.

Time to start picking up the pieces.

**Author's Note:**

> THE LAST FIC FOR WHUMPTOBER! (I did it!!)
> 
> I hope you liked it! Happy Halloween!


End file.
